Sean Reyes: “Mr. Speaker, it is a sad day today. I do not know if anybody else is as ashamed as I am that we are going through this…”

“Mr. Speaker, it is a sad day today. I do not know if anybody else is as ashamed as I am that we are going through this kind of a process. When I think back at the times I have visited Iraq, five times that I have visited in Iraq, and I sit across the table, whether it is for breakfast, for lunch or for dinner, with the soldiers, they look at us and they have a trust that we are going to do the right thing. They look at us, and they know that we are going to represent their best interests. In my district at Fort Bliss, Texas, there are about 2,500 military families that have been looking forward to getting a benefit from this program that we are talking about here. We were looking forward to it. It is clear to me that what we are doing here today is a lot of political CYA and nothing substantial apparently is going to come from it. Shame on us for not having the guts to stand up and do what is right for our military families, and shame on us for passing emergency legislation, supplemental bills, that give $20 billion, $21 billion, whatever that figure is, to reconstruct neighborhoods, give garbage trucks and all of these other things in Iraq, when we cannot even do the basic thing for our military families.”